1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to optical receiver design, and more specifically to characterizing optical receiver performance based on receiver impulse response.
2. Description of Related Art
High-speed optical equipment such as a 40 Gb/s optical receiver can be characterized by an eye diagram that graphically illustrates the equipment's performance.
Eye diagrams provide a qualitative understanding of a receiver's performance, and the method of eye diagrams' construction is well documented in publicly available documents. The amount of Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) determines the extent of eye closure, and a large ISI indicates poor equipment performance. Moreover, the concepts of ISI and eye closure are both well documented and described in conventional systems.
Understanding the amount of eye closure from ISI in a band-limited system is key to proper analysis of systems such as 40 Gb/s receivers.
However, constructing a system capable of generating and viewing optical pulses needed to test such receivers currently is prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, few organizations are capable of designing or manufacturing such a system, and the excessive cost incurs an undesirable burden.
Accordingly, there is a need for an economical means for characterizing high-speed optical equipment.